Category: Gratitude Sunday (Page 2 of 12)

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

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♥

– Having my Honey home all these days. His arm is still mending and he hasn’t been cleared yet to go back to work by the doctors. We’ve both been hanging very low, letting our bodies rest and heal, taking long walks, cooking nourishing food, and basically living life in the slow lane and taking each day as it comes. It seems like just what we both need right now, and it feels so nice.

– A dusk walk on Halloween night, to see decorated houses, glowing jack-o-lanterns, and trick-or-treaters.

– Realizing this morning that today is the end of daylight savings and appreciating the bonus hour in my day.

– Putting a heating pad at the foot of the bed before bedtime, and then crawling in and having warm feet on a chilly night!

– Time away from the computer.

– Doing some light chores that made things look better, while moving at a deliberate, unhurried pace.

– Realizing that to maintain happiness and ward off feelings of overwhelm, I need more quiet time/down time/move-slowly time (at least right now) than I previously even realized.

– A wonderful afternoon visiting with my parents today, and then joining them for dinner too. What a nice visit it was.

– Seeing a big long shooting star just a minute ago as I went outside to get the bathroom rug off the clothesline. It was comforting to see that. Shooting stars are so special.

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What’s on your gratitude list this week?

*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

♥

– That F is okay and more damage was not sustained in a bike accident he was in (which was the direct result of poor workmanship by a technician in a local bike shop). He has a broken bone in his elbow but thanks to his helmet, no head injuries. While sitting in the ER with him, I kept being so grateful that he was walking, talking, smiling… the way it all happened, it’s amazing it wasn’t much worse. He’s a tough cookie and I love him so.

– Writing gratitudes each night; it redirects my sometimes-wandering gaze to the good things around me. The past several weeks have been rough. There’s a lot I haven’t been grateful for and sometimes it’s really hard to stay positive. But at the end of the day, I remember again just how thick with blessings my life is. Everyone’s is… you just have to reprogram you brain to see them all. I really love picking them out because it’s such an uplifting mental activity.

– Special one-on-one time with my Dad last weekend. We went to our favorite nature spot and it was a gorgeous day and were treated to a rare and special sighting of hundreds of sandhill cranes! (deviating for some reason from their normal migration route)

– Feeling lighter after being in nature that day. In nature don’t you find that your worries and fears that seem so real and all-consuming… just sort of shrink into the background.

– Getting my studio finally FINALLY unpacked and cleaned up and set up! It took hours because there was crap strewn everywhere. And now instead of averting my eyes every time I pass this room, I actually want to be in it (matter fact I’m in it right now). See it in the photo below?

– Finding the sweetness in convalescence. This is a really hard one sometimes when I’m so flipping sick of “still recovering” (evidently it’s a looong process), and the constant worry and fear that I never will be back to my old self (ooo that’s a big one). Sometimes I desperately repeat “find the sweetness find the sweetness” but I can’t. And then other times when I slow myself to the appropriate pace, and embrace whatever’s going on at the moment, and look around at where I am, and who I have around me, I can find the sweetness and those moments feel so good.

– My evening walks. I love them. And the other night I brought tea along with me in one of those paper coffee to-go cups with the plastic lids. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?! Tea on a dusk walk in the Autumn. Three of my favorite things rolled into one.

– Gorgeous sunsets. I love dusk anyway, and the fiery sunsets have been such a nice bonus. I love the silhouettes of the bare trees, and the crows flying home to roost, and the slow crickets, and the mug of hot tea in my hands, and the closing of the day and the quieter, cozier, more inward energy of the evening.

– The warm weather we’ve had. I love still being able to virtually live outside each day. It does a spirit good!

– Going to the health food store with F. He walked while I slowly rode my bike alongside. I loved this so much. I also loved the slow pace and getting to see all the autumn colors in slo-mo.

– Homemade applesauce, warmed, with nutmeg and plain yogurt.

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And what about your week? What has been good about it?

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*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

♥

– Warm applesauce made with the apples off our tree, with cloves and cinnamon, eaten with grassfed yogurt that I made in my solar oven. What a blissful, delicious snack!

– Apple fruit leather, made in the solar oven. Another blissful snack!

– Sitting outside in the backyard, wrapped in a robe, with fresh ginger tea at 5:00 one morning, as gentle rain began to fall. It was so quiet and peaceful. Then, going back to bed and sleeping till I was much more rested!

– The sight of the leaves changing color.

– Seeing more and more signs of autumn. More and more pumpkins appearing on doorsteps!

– Warm, totally gorgeous weather, followed by cold, cloudy weather where we were cozy inside. I love both!

– Amazing garden vegetable soup with soaked & solar-cooked brown rice. It was incredible. It had in it: tomatoes, garlic, onion, celery, green beans, parsley, potato, cabbage, thyme, rosemary, oregano, carrot, zucchini, broccoli, and brown rice. The only things not from the garden were the carrots and rice!

– Having really good energy a couple days this week and using it to catch up with all the backed up stuff that I’d been wanting to do. I was grateful for the timing, since I had so much to do to prepare for the first frost.

– Making the house more orderly, and finding places for all the plants we brought in before frost. An orderly, clean house really is so nice.

– Before bed, unwinding by candlelight. Turning off the electric lights, and writing my gratitude list by candlelight. What a lovely thing.

– Tea. Or just hot water for that matter! Having hot water any time I want, so I can make tea. A simple luxury.

– Being able to (mostly) clear as much space in my life as is needed right now, to hang really low and allow my body to do some major purging and healing.

– Being at this house. Having our own yard — our own territory. We love it here.

– A cold but really beautiful and refreshing bike ride to the health food store yesterday with F. I love our weekly rides to the store together. And the leaves have changed color so much since last weekend, and looked particularly beautiful against the cloudy sky. Last week was so hot and we rode in shorts and t-shirts, and this week it was 32° with snow flurries in the air!

– Laughing hard at a comedy show we were streaming from the BBC last night. We love their comedy shows, in particular Live at the Apollo, but occasionally others too. Genuine, uncontrolled laughter is really great medicine and makes everything feel lighter.

– Impromptu Friday night pizza dinner over at my parents’ new pad — what a fun thing that was!

***

And what about you? What has been on your own gratitude list this past week?

*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

♥

– Gorgeous, settled weather. Being able to have the windows open all day long, and having it be warm enough to really live outside all day. I love this season!!!!

– This season of abundance where I’m eating largely out of the garden. I think homegrown food is sacred food… it feels sacred anyway… and I feel so good putting it in my body. I think it’s even neater when I can cook my garden food in the solar oven, because not only is it fun, but it seems like that strong solar life-force energy must imbue something good!

– That our tree has apples this year. About a third of each apple is unusable because of apple coddling moths — I really hate those things — and the squirrels are more than a little wasteful in their consumption of the apples, but that’s okay; there’s still more than enough for us. Even though we don’t give the apple tree any special attention or fertilizer or anything, it still has generously produced the biggest, most beautiful apples! The variety is Red (un)Delicious, so they’re not spectacular for eating fresh, but they do make nice applesauce.

– Tons of sun = tons of solar cooking = hardly any indoor cooking on the stove!

– A moon cycle for me, finally. I haven’t had one in close to a year, and it feels like such a triumph for my poor ol’ body which feels so broken sometimes. The medical people say that not cycling is not healthy for your body because it increases your risk of cancer and whatever else. It just seemed like yet another problem to deal with. A couple months ago while lying in the silvery light of the full moon, I said internally to whoever might care, “Fix me, Grandmother Moon.” Perhaps there’s a Grandmother Moon, perhaps there isn’t, but something replied right back to me, “But you’re not broken, dear.” And indeed, it turns out that I’m not broken. It feels weird to type to the world about this very personal matter, but it wants to be said. One of the things I’m realizing (and just beginning to put words to) during this experience of extended, major illness and difficult recovery is that one of the little-talked-about effects is a disconnect — maybe even a total detachment, yes — from your physical body… and if you’re a woman, most especially from that soft, delicate, inward feminine nature. When you’re sick, you don’t feel beautiful — you feel the very furthest thing from beautiful. You don’t regard your body as the sacred vessel it most certainly is — because it feels like a living hell to be trapped in a severely sick, pain-filled body, and you just want out. When you’re sick, that tender and complex and ethereal and soft and fragile aura of feminine confidence you’ve gingerly built within yourself over the years… well it gets blasted apart, unceremoniously. When you’ve got a major illness going on, your femininity is one of the first things out the window, as your very survival shoots to the top of the list. And so now, having my body perform on its own accord a most normal and feminine thing, not only feels triumphant and reassuring, but also symbolic as the beginning of the rebuilding of something that’s been lost.

– Having a quiet, pleasantly lazy weekend, not overdoing it, and yet still getting the things done that I wanted to. That feels perfect — the perfect blend of rest and activity. I love it when I manage to achieve that.

– Clean windows. So nice!!

– Finishing up some applesauce- and sauerkraut-making before heading to bed one night, and feeling so content. Soft lighting, quiet music, being in our own home, in our own beautiful kitchen, preserving the food that I just picked from the backyard.

– My loved ones around me. It’s the thing I love the very most.

– The small walks I’ve been taking at dusk almost every day. I love them.

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What are some of your gratitudes from this past week?

*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

♥

– An chilly early morning outside with a cup of tea, a blanket, and a book. Catching the long rays of morning sun sitting out on the lawn in my wicker chair and watching steam rising from my mug. Marvelling at the freshness and beauty around me. It was a wonderful way to begin a day.

– The sound of sweeping. It’s homey.

– The complete silence of the nighttime and early morning in our new area. After 5 years of unrelenting traffic noise every minute of every hour of every day of every year…this is such a relief. And I’m grateful for our time at our apartment for the very reasons I disliked it — so that I can appreciate that much more deeply the way things are different now.

– Giving myself a hair cut; I was gonna grow it out but decided I didn’t want to right now. I like it much better at this shorter length. And for fun I calculated how much money I’ve saved over the years by always cutting my own hair. Being that I haven’t had a professional haircut since about October of 2008, I’m figuring roughly $1300 saved over these last four years. Yah!

– Feeling inspired and hopeful, two underrated emotions!

– The freshly mowed lawn.

– Retreating from the world for a while. I’ve been feeling quite inward lately, and just want to kinda lay low and cocoon myself. In fact I feel like I’m incubating, although I can’t quite put into words what that means; it’s just the feeling I have. And how lucky to be able to withdraw from the world for a while, to rest, and to not have to shove myself into it by way of a daily job. And the setting couldn’t be better. I think I may have already said this in a previous post, but finally I can rest and hang low without slipping into feelings of depression and isolation. This new environment… this beautiful and quiet home in a quiet neighborhood with good vibes, surrounded by our own territory, being able to spend all my waking hours outside in our private outdoor space, immersed in nature, is truly making all the difference in the world.

– The mix of summer and autumn right now; what an ideal time of the year. The earlier darkness (I welcome it), yet still warm enough for evenings outside and cicadas and crickets. The chilly mornings and the calls of blue jays in the distance, yet still the summery-hot mid-days and gorgeous garden food.

– The distinct feeling of being at the beach on Friday — the cool, humid air, the fast-moving clouds, and the beachy smell of decomposing sea life rising from the garden after a thorough dousing of Liquid Fish & Seaweed on Thursday night.

– Finally completing some of the pesky tasks that do nothing but follow me around and take up space in my day planner. I often have to remind myself that “It probably won’t get done if you don’t do it.” Indeed, probably not.

– The garden glowing in the long golden shadows of the setting sun, and everything perfect, still, and peaceful. These are the best evenings of the year.

What are some gratitudes from your week?

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